Southern had a few problems with engineering replacement services yesterday - reports of 1,500 pssengers waiting to travel south at Redhill on buses which replaced trains on the main Brighton line, with five members of Southern stff on duty and a "flow capacity" on the buses of 750 passengers per hour. North Down lines (GWR passengers to Gatwick) would have been caught up here too ...

This weekend (24 & 25 February) saw line closes on the Brighton mainline and through Redhill to allow Network Rail to carry out necessary track improvement works.

Having seen the advance notice provided by Southern Rail of the shutdown and that on Sunday – specifically all Gatwick and South Cost bound passengers from London would be terminating at Redhill to transfer to busses – we wrote to Southern/Gatwick Express/Network Rail to warn that Redhill station couldn’t cope with the number of passengers arriving or that there would be enough trains for onward travel for those returning to London.

Sadly, despite replying to our emails they didn’t listen or take any further action. And seeing what has happened this weekend – especially today at Redhill Station – Our Chairman Stephen Trigg has written again asking that they listen and take action.

Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Member of Melksham Rail User Group, on the board of TravelWatch SouthWest and some more things besides

Network Rail should do the responsible thing and suspend the works pending an investigation into Southern's ability to manage the situation. I've no doubt that this set up was resourced to the bare bones as with every other part of the railway. As a (former) daily commuter on the line there have been several occasions of extreme overcrowding in recent years that I'd define as a near miss and should have been investigated. I wasn't there today but my wife was, she returned home after a five hour journey from Victoria this afternoon feeling pretty distraught after this afternoon's events .

Quote

To Update everyone, Angie Doll (Passenger Service Director Southern) called me firstly to apologise of course and to thank all the people of Redhill who took their cars down to the station and gave lifts. Great people, well done you have our thanks too.

We then had a conversation about next week, she agreed that a better replacement bus service was needed and would provide next week. We also suggested Gatwick Passengers being sent to East Grinstead to spread the load and she said she would look into. We also pointed out that the trains were inadequate for capacity as well and she took that on. Hopefully we will have an update next week.

Quote

On the face of it, it ( the chaos at Redhill) looks like an entirely foreseeable outcome that could have been avoided.

The parties involved (gtr, southern, NR) have no interest in, or commercial incentive to, make arrangements to provide anything for the people who pay to use their services, let alone in adverse or unusual circumstances.

The economic model is not fit for purpose. (As we know, but this is further evidence).

What are the consequences of yesterday’s fiasco for anyone at NR, gtr or southern?

Quote

Let's be absolutely clear where the blame lies. It's with Chris Grayling and Jo Johnson - their departments micromanagement and criminal underfunding of GTR under the Management Contract is the root cause of all the issues.

Politically it is very small in their daily work as they look after trains cars and planes all over the UK. We need local representation to run our trains services like TfL in London where Sadiq is directly responsible for Londoners trains services and accordingly accountable.

Quote

Planning wise it looks like around 750 bus seats per hour were put on to replace over 2500 train seats per hour (thats not counting thameslink). How could this ever have worked?

In answer to that latter, amazingly, it could have worked. From personal experience, passenger numbers shrivel when the journey is degraded to a rail replacement bus ... perhaps one passenger on the bus for every 4 or 5 who would have been on a train. I suspect that whoever was planning for Redhill knew this general rule of shrinkage, but neglected to take into account that the rule isn't a fixed one - people are likely to not go / find alternatives on short journeys which are leisure, but still have to make their long distance trips and especially need things like connections to Gatwick Airport!

Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Member of Melksham Rail User Group, on the board of TravelWatch SouthWest and some more things besides

Sounds as if someone couldn't organise the proverbial you know what in a brewery!It's not only really bad for the passengers..... I really feel for the front line staff who have to put up with tirades of abuse and who must feel like jacking it all in, because of somebody else's incompetence who isn't there to face the music with them.

Logged

Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new
question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

This forum is provided by a customer of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the
individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for
the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content
provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants